Promoting content and English learning in a bilingual curriculum at the elementary school level

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examined the implementation of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) as a bilingual approach to a school subject at the elementary level in Taiwan. The findings show that the CLIL lessons, that is, bilingual lessons were led by the language teacher (i.e. the native English-speaking teacher in this study) and were favourably perceived by the content teachers. However, the content teachers and the language teacher were not familiar with bilingual approaches, and the instruction of the bilingual lessons was language-focused. Additionally, the bilingual lessons were disconnected from the regular curriculum of the subject. Given the findings, the author made suggestions for the implementation of bilingual curricula and bilingual teacher education, such as jointly developing bilingual curricula by the content teacher and language teacher, equipping teachers with knowledge about the underpinnings of bilingual approaches, and catering to the content teachers’ needs by providing English language training.